Realistic approach to innovation

I'm still thinking about our recent innovation debate. Should we take a positivistic approach to innovation? Should we view innovation as something that will always work and always generate benefits? Of course not since the whole idea contradicts the core nature of what innovation is. There are several definitions out there but looking more closely you realize they differ in syntax yet point in the same direction. Innovation is thus an idea transformed into some sort of reality for the first time (e.g. change to an existing product, new product, change to an existing process, new process, change to an existing organizational entity, new organizational entity, etc.). The result? Microsoft introduce Windows Vista and new Office with changed user interface (clear innovation) yet people do not buy it because years of exposure to a specific user interface logic has wired brains in a way that now needs complete rewiring and that is a slow process. Time will tell but I know a lot of people who have kept Office 2003 and Windows XP. In the same breath Microsoft admits failing to achieve sales targets so the innovative Vista is not really a success yet nobody can deny its innovativeness. Coca Cola's experiment with a new taste is another example of an innovation with in this case pretty dismal consequences.

So, the reality is innovations do not always bring positive results (i.e. improved competitiveness, increased market share, higher profits, higher revenues, etc.). Should we then have a negative stance towards innovation? The answer is a straightforward NO! Innovations are a result of ideas put forward by individuals or teams who bear with it enormous personal risks of failure. The worst way one could react in is by saying we are not supporting innovations because they can fail. Why? Because people simply won't suggest any new ideas any more and in today's competitive environment that is a suicide. Of course innovations can fail and they will but normally for every 10 innovations a couple of successful ones can bring such benefits that all other failures are quickly forgotten. What we really need is a realistic approach to innovation in the following way:

• all innovations are good (we openly and eagerly accept all ideas although only the best are really turned into innovations)
• many innovations will fail but we do not worry because a minor few will bring benefits far outweighing all the failures

So in summary, innovations are there to stay as they are absolutely necessary if companies are to retain competitive advantage but realistically they are often more likely to fail than succeed. I'm afraid facing this reality is the only key to success.

Debate on innovation

I'm just back from an organized discussion that addressed innovation in long-term capital goods projects and it's really intriguing how one particular type of generalization has managed to prevail in the modern research on the subject. Let me paraphrase some of the ideas that were floating around.

Do clients hinder innovation? Well, the question is more or less meaningless. An analogy would be investigating the structure of a hydrogen atom by viewing a distant star with a telescope. You can try but it is utterly meaningless. You need to use a microscope or some other similar device and study the atom up close and not some distant stars despite the fact that they might be constituted by these atoms. So, coming back to innovation, one needs to study innovation where it happens and it happens in closely knit teams – in heads of individuals and not on some abstract organizational levels. Organizations are entities that exist in a communicative space constituted by individual participating people through their own communicative domains. Therefore, organizations cannot innovate, think and so on. Individuals think, create and suggest ideas, other individuals object, accept or reject these ideas and so on. Now, whether this happens in communities of practice (i.e. closely knit teams) or within a particular hierarchy we are still talking about individuals operating in some specific circumstances. So in this sense talking about NHS as a client organization has no bearing with what innovation represents in reality, a product of individual thinking. Yes, you are not alone in the process, you need other people to work with you if you want your ingenious idea to become an innovation one day. However, it is not an organisation that is doing the thinking along the way but people involved in the process. Would thus building a hospital for NHS Scotland be the same as building it for NHS England or Northern Ireland for that matter? Of course not because we would be exposed to completely different circumstances, surrounded by completely different people and the only commonality we can talk about in this case is situation- or circumstances-centred study of innovation. There is no single personified entity of NHS that hinders or supports innovation. There are people or teams within its structure that are more or less prone to changes, and there are procedural obstacles (e.g. red tape). You may be lucky enough to be able to work with the right type of people though red tape by itself may filter out some of the more radical innovations. Furthermore, all that implies innovation studies need to be centred around a specific team and valid questions to me then are:

• How a team of individuals each with specific characteristics generate innovations in a specific team setting?
• What happens if we change the setting?
• What happens if we replace one individual from the team with another person that has opposing characteristics?
• What if we enlarge/reduce such a team?
• What are the procedural obstacles that may prevent the team to turn ideas into innovations?

To summarize there are two types of generalization out there. On one hand you can look at a client organization like NHS for instance and ask yourself how they impact innovation on their capital goods projects. In this case you will constantly run into trouble because in one project they may hinder innovation yet in another they don't. The reason being that different people will be responsible for different projects. The other option is to generalize by means of studying functional primitive of the innovation process and that is an individual or a team of individuals followed by investigating the impact of individual characteristics (i.e. individual differences) and structural characteristics (i.e. team structure and setting). The most important outcome of this second generalization si replicability or genuine generalization leading to findings that can be applied in any organization, be it client, contractor or any other industry that is. I don't know about you but I prefer the second option as it has far greater chances of producing something that can help improve our udnerstanding of innovation and innovation processes themselves.